He described the internet as a dumb, pluripotent network: key feature is its lack of central regulation that private networks have. This is also the reason why it’s so adaptable – everyone can contribute and develop content and applications

Technological designers are often poor predictors of how technology will be used, e.g. envisioning a 500-channel, increasingly high-resolution universe – in fact the opposite has happened. Early predictors of telecommunications predicted that phones would be used for listening to opera.

Evolution of the phone industry: lawsuits in US established that you could plug anything into your wall – not tied to buying your phone from the telecom company. Novelty phones developed, allowing people to express themselves with their phone despite poorer quality audio. Next, wireless phones often produced mixed conversations with the people next door using the same brand, but the benefit of not being tied (literally) to the wall socket won out. Then came mobile phones, Skype, international calling cards for public phones (essentially Skype over normal phone line).

All of these phases have had broader uptake than predicted. Customisation, control and individual access are more valuable than quality. See also HD TV versus YouTube!

Countries have their own rules for telecoms and for internet. For example, Canada can take US broadcast signals and display on cable TV without broadcasters’ permission. In the US, foreign copyright is not recognised. ‘Yankee’ comes from the Dutch word for ‘pirate’, because they stole a porcelain recipe, which had previously been stolen from Chinese. US libraries don’t pay authors for lending rights. And perhaps Scandinavian libraries pay authors too much?

International treaties have begun to harmonise rights for people who create information. However, these have also destroyed countries’ freedom to adapt to local priorities. There is no ceiling on exclusive rights. Makes preservation and lending harder, as rules differ.

South Africa has no law to provide for format-shifting for accessibility e..g for Braille.

The Authors’ Guild claims that even making a copy for indexing infringes copyright law – what about search engines? Do they believe the web should go away?

Copying will never get harder. Memory will get cheaper and smaller.

Copyright law behaves as if copying actions only involve corporations. But now everything we do involves copying, on an industrial scale, ironically.

So far, no input from people involved in access – only commercial. Should this be for the economics minister or culture minister to decide?

DRM (digital rights management) technology. Cryptosystems. A hidden key within scrambled system can always be broken. Does reverse engineering break the copyright of software?

We can’t even stop spam, let alone copyright infringement, and that’s when people are cooperating with the aim.

Industrial economy not based on building machines, but accessing them.

It used to cost a lot to organise people, but the internet has lowered the coordination cost of doing new things together. This is great news for everyone who does everything.

IT is the driving force behind business – cutting off internet access is more harmful to society than trying to control copying of films.

Shell is not oil company, it’s IT company that uses IT to move oil – Burma could not shut down Internet during protests because oil had to keep moving.

Three strikes and out for copyright infringement? How is this decided? By whom? Who is telling the truth?

Collective punishment is outlawed by the Geneva Convention. How does this compare with shutting off IP range in response to systematic downloading? This is not reciprocal either: no suggestion of shutting off entertainment companies for their transgressions.

Text of ACTA is secret. We know it includes a 3 strikes clause. Criminal sanctions for non-commercial infringement. Provision to wire-tap the internet to detect – no privacy. Might even extend to searching hard drives at borders?

When the public are invited to the table, it’s clear that they don’t want this.

Once you buy a book, it’s yours to share, inherit/pass on… Not so with ebooks. Your are the licensor not the owner. Destroys the emotional bond with the text. Terms of licenses override copyright, and licenses also tie readers to software. Society is sentimentally attached to books. Burning books is symbolic. The most important part of the experience of reading a book is knowing that it is property. Ebook readers animate page turns… But the true experience can only be replicated by ownership. Cory predicts the destruction of publishing and authorship if books are not owned.

Copyright reflections

Need librarians to contact their MEPs and ensure the copyright issue is kept high on the agenda. Find out who your MEP is here.

It was pointed out that Open Access funding to publish comes from opposite end of uni finances from funding for journal subscriptions: journal subscriptions currently paid from library budgets, but OA publishing fees would come from researchers’ project funding.

Copyleft = share-alike under CC. “Losing the cathedral but gaining the faith” – we used to make buildings that took 3 generations to construct, but now focusing on cheaper, quicker user-generated alternatives.

Earlier this year, Gordon Brown announced access to Internet is a utility (therefore should not be cut off as a sanction), then Peter Mandelson reversed this.

Could fair dealing be expanded to mean what people think it means? – e.g. being allowed to put a cartoon on your blog just like you would be allowed to take it from a newspaper and put it on your wall at work.

Current copyright laws criminalise ordinary behaviour and this undermines public confidence in the law generally.

Learning 1.0, 2.0 and Beyond

There are 130 staff (FTE) at Imperial College Library and 38 took part in 2009. The structure of the Learning 2.0 Programme consisted of one hour a week completely online, weekly drop-ins and three workshops (introduction, multimedia, Second Life). It was different from 23 Things in that it focused on technology as a whole, with both required and optional exercises (3-4 exercises per week over 10 weeks – many more than 23 Things). It was part of the structured staff development programme. Staff were surveyed before and after to assess their levels of confidence in different Web 2.0 areas. Results of the effect of the programme on skill levels – increased in all areas; dramatically in some areas e.g. wikis.

What didn’t work so well

Drop out rate

Too many passwords to remember?

Timing – the programme ran over the summer months so many people on holiday at some point

Content balance. Wikis were not very successful because no task was involved – just ‘go and have a look at it’ – needs to be more directed

Development time for organisers! Replying to emails, staffing workshops

Hour a week not enough?

Lack of commenting on blogs – need to encourage this

What worked well?

Enthusiasm of participants

Staff now using tools (though the main objective is exposure, not necessarily take-up)

Communities developed – mostly extension of existing groups to the web

Increased confidence

Range of activities and exercises

Learning experience for team

Discovering technologies and their applications in libraries

Participation of senior management (Assistant Director) raised profile of the programme. Management buy-in sent a strong message to other managers